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About ads, posters and Larisa’s secret

└ posted on Saturday, 16 November 2013, by Novil

About ads

I have recently received a few complaints about annoying ads on sandraandwoo.com, in particular from readers visiting the website on their Android mobile phone. I want to apologize for that, but you have to understand that it’s not always easy for me to fix this kind of problem, especially without further information about the ad. Every user, including myself, sees different ads! I have already limited our pool of ad agencies to those who offer the possibility to block certain kinds of ads (and domains) in their administration panel. Please write an e-mail to novil@gmx.de or write a post in this forum thread if you had a problem with an ad. The comment section of a comic is not the right place for such complaints.

If sandraandwoo.com is not the only the website suddenly showing popup ads or other annoying ads, it might also be possible that your Android phone is compromised. Android phones are gradually becoming the number one target for viruses and malware, including malicious apps tinkering with the web browser.

About posters

I know that there are around 20 readers waiting for their free posters. Last week, I was finally able to take the time to prepare everything, at least I thought so. I ordered and received the mailing tubes and prepared the image files. However, it turned out that the print shop wants PDF files and I’m currently a bit puzzled how to create them. I need:

2 images on an A1 print, 5 images on an A3 print, 3 images on an A4 print.

The images should be enlarged (or shrinked) to fill the format, including a small white border around them.

There should be no quality loss.

I looked for PNG to PDF converters but found nothing that matches my requirements since the PDFCreator is bundled with malware. So maybe I will just use Word. However, I’m afraid that will become a tedious task. But it’s probably still faster than using LaTeX… Well, if someone could give me a tip in the comment section I’d appreciate it. If someone could do the whole conversion for me that would be even better. If you’re eager to help, write an e-mail to novil@gmx.de.

Update: I used Scribus as recommended by a few readers. Thank you for all your suggestions!

About Larisa’s secret

Many of you wonder if Larisa’s “big secret” is related to her behavior in [0126] Secrets. While I don’t want to talk about that in particular, it certainly appears odd that I haven’t written a story arc about Larisa’s background in all these years since [0126] Secrets was published. The reason for that is that I started to like the story arc that I had originally planned less and less and eventually decided to ditch it. I’m sure that many of you would not have liked that story arc or even hated it as well. I can therefore only ask for your patience until I’m able to come up with a story arc of the usual quality you can expect from Sandra and Woo.

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Discussion (19)¬

Last I knew, Photoshop can save PDFs(I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t still do it). There’s also an open-source page layout program called Scribus that can export them. I haven’t had a need to try Scribus, so I can’t say any more than their website, but it’s pretty popular and supports CMYK.
I’ve only exported to PDF a few times, and that was using my old Mac’s print-to-PDF function in the print dialog.

I can second everything Garrett says. I can also vouch for CutePDF which is a pretty decent PDF printer (it sets itself up as a dummy printer driver, you “print” the file to it, and it outputs a PDF). As for resizing the images to the page, pretty much anything should be able to do that, including Windows’ default image viewing program. I don’t think it would lose any quality as I doubt it would bother to actually resample the image when it can just change its display size.

Larissa might be just sniffing glue. 🙂 But considering she’s a diabetic, it could also be some kind of nose spray for something in her sinuses.
About a publisher only wanting PDF files? That’s stupid! Find another publisher who happens to be more professional!
Oh, wait… Print shop. Hmmm… Is it http://www.vistaprint.de/ or some other shop? Vistaprint is not bad, although a bit expensive…

About that PNG2PDF issue:
From my experience the main reason to require PDF as a print shop is that PDF
offers good and compatible encapsulation of vectorgraphics, fonts and image files.
Embedding of colour profiles plays into that as well.
But I’d agree with Alex.
Since PNG is lossless it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for the print shop to process the image, given that it’s resolution is sufficient.

More important: How did you create those posters in the first place?
As bitmaps? In Photoshop? Or in some drawing software like PS Illustrator or Corel Draw?
Did you check if you can export as PDF with the program you used?

Apart from that, have you considered Inkscape?
It can vectorise bitmaps and exports to PDF.
It’s got plenty of tutorials on the internets.

My first commenting here, by the way.
Love S&W and Gaia, just terrific 😉

“Larisa’s Big Secret” – We’ve always been able to rely on you for good, solid story, Oliver. If you say Larisa’s backstory needs a rewrite then I am certainly willing to wait, patiently, for as long as you say I have to! Thank you for being so reliable and quality minded.

I’ve only exported to PDF a few times, and that was using my old Mac’s print-to-PDF function in the print dialog.

And though it’s been said, yeah, I should have added that I wouldn’t recommend a print-to-PDF option like Mac’s option or CutePDF for such a print job anyway, since it’s likely geared toward desktop printers instead of professional poster printers. I’ve tried CutePDF but it messed up the page layout on my one printing so I didn’t feel it worth mentioning(it might be better this many years later).
I’m glad Scribus is working for you. Seems like the right tool for the job.

Kamino Neko wrote:
Any chance of you sharing what the discarded storyline was to be? (With the understanding that it is now entirely non-canon.)
Just chiming in on wanting to hear about the discarded story arc.
Also, to go along with Someone‘s comment, I would hope what ever you create for a new arc does not discard what happened in [126].

Thirded. On both accounts. Call me naturally curious and impatient, but now I *really* want to read the original plot you had for Larisa’s secret as well, knowing that it would be replaced by a (likely better) one. 🙂

Though in that vein, I’m aldo starting to wonder if Larisa’s subsequent actions in [0173] The Look into the Mind of a Troubled Girl, and her revealing her secret to Zoey in [0528] Larisa’s Big Secret, are related to the old plot for Larisa or if it’s instead related to the new one you’re working on.